Social housing is being demolished or sold off as owners cannot afford repair bills to make the properties safe in the wake of the Grenfell fire disaster.
Housing associations have told The i Paper they have no choice but to tear down buildings or evict tenants and sell their homes on the open market as no government funding is available to help meet the cost of renovations.
Government-funded schemes – such as the Building Safety Fund and the Social Sector ACM Cladding Remediation Fund – launched to replace unsafe cladding in the aftermath of Grenfell are either only available for apartment blocks over 18 metres high or for privately-owned properties.
Bouverie Court in Easton, Bristol, is set to be torn down in 2026 after housing association Elim Housing was hit with a £4m bill to replace its external cladding and fix other fire defects.
“It would cost more than £4m to make this building safe,” Elim’s chief executive Paul Smith said. “So, unfortunately, we’re going to have to demolish the building.”
Bouverie Court was built in 2011 and contains 14 self-contained flats and seven houses which are home to more than 50 residents.
Elim was pursuing a legal claim against Bouverie Court’s original developer, ISG Pearce, to recover the financial sum, however after ISG Pearce became insolvent and collapsed into administration in September 2024, Elim was unable to progress the claim.
“We felt that there was not much prospect of getting anything from them or our insurance so we gave up,” Smith said.
Due to a lack of government funding for repairs to smaller social housing blocks, Smith said he was faced with a grim reality: paying more money than Bouverie Court was worth to make it safe, while also funding temporary accommodation for more than 50 people, or demolishing the homes.
Ruth Davison, Islington and Shoreditch Housing Association chief executive, outside Kinver House in north London (Photo: Tom Pilston)“It’s inexplicable that there is no government help for social housing providers,” he added.
“Bristol City Council has agreed to put everyone in the top band on the social housing waiting list. We hope that we can keep people in the community because it’s not just about their home, it’s their neighbourhood and their schools but it’s obviously very distressing.
“Nobody goes into the business of providing social housing to take people’s homes off them.”
Elsewhere, other small housing associations are having to resort to selling off social homes to private owners in order to fund fire safety work.
Kinver House in Archway, north London, is a medium-rise building with serious fire safety issues including flammable timber cladding and missing fire breaks.
Funding to fix Grenfell-style fire safety issues
There are three main Government funding pots available for the remediation of social housing blocks but there are restrictions on which buildings apply.
The Building Safety Fund (BSF)
This fund is available for buildings over 18 metres tall. It was opened to applications in 2020 and then again in 2022.
It not only covers the cost of removing unsafe cladding but also insulation.
Social landlords can apply to the BSF but only if they have at least one qualifying private leaseholder homeowner living in the block.
The Cladding Safety Scheme
This scheme provides funding for the management of unsafe cladding on medium-rise buildings between 11 and 18 metres in height. It is only available for the removal of cladding and does not cover other fire safety defects.
The Social Sector ACM removal fund
In 2018, the government announced a £400m Social Sector ACM Cladding Remediation Fund to pay for the removal and replacement of unsafe ACM cladding on social residential buildings of 18 metres or over. However, it is only available for ACM cladding – the same as that of Grenfell Tower.
One side of the building is privately owned and has therefore had remediation work full funded by the Building Safety Fund. The other is owned by Islington and Shoreditch Housing Association (ISHA) and contains 31 social housing homes. ISHA have no access to government funds to make these homes safe.
Ruth Davison, the chief executive of ISHA, said she has no choice but to sell off valuable social homes, including in Sir Keir Starmer’s constituency in nearby Holborn and St Pancras, in order to fund a fire safety bill at Kinver House which has run into the millions.
She said: “This is the first time in ISHA’s 90-year history we’ve had to sell homes, and we’re doing it in parts of London where affordable housing is urgently needed.
“We’re not only having to sell off affordable homes, we’ve massively scaled back on building new homes.
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“Let’s just be clear, social renters are the people who were most uniquely affected by Grenfell and they are the only people who have no access to taxpayers’ funds to make homes safe. Those are political decisions.”
The trade body for housing associations, the National Housing Federation (NHF), is calling on the Government to give social housing providers equal access to the Building Safety Fund and Cladding Safety Scheme at the Chancellor’s upcoming Spending Review.
The NHF warned that housing associations estimate they will need to spend more than £6bn to make all social housing buildings safe over the next decade. Chief executive Kate Henderson said: “The lack of funding is not only affecting the pace of remediation in social housing but forcing not-for-profit housing associations to divert money away from services for residents and building new homes.”
Research by the NHF and Savills suggests that without government support for social housing providers, including building safety funding, the Labour Government is likely to fall around 500,000 homes short of its target to build 1.5 million new homes by the end of the current Parliament.
A Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesperson said: “As set out in the Remediation Acceleration Plan, we will announce a long-term social housing remediation strategy this spring to make sure landlords have the funding they need to fix buildings.”
“Alongside this we are taking action to accelerate remediation of social housing, including increasing support for social landlords to access funding.”
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